1. Wake up before the kids 3x a week for "me" time. So, one perk to being a stay at home mom to kids who are not yet in school means that I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn to get ready for the day. I typically don't set an alarm and don't wake up until Atticus comes into our room to crawl in bed with us - which could be at 6:30 or even 8:00. So, on average, I get out of bed at 7:30 every morning. But, recently, Atticus and sometimes Grace are not taking afternoon naps. So, my "me" time to be lazy or be extra productive has gone away. So, I am telling myself to get up in the morning earlier and do what I need or want to do. But, I do love my sleep, so this one will be a challenge. But, it's a challenge that I know I will LOVE if I just get my rear end out of bed when that alarm goes off. And I know my wake-up mood will be better too with the kids. Some days, I just need more than 1/2 a second before I have little children's voices in my ear needing breakfast or cartoons or whatever else.
2. Read 2 books: one for fun and one for study/improvement: I love to read. And, I have a stack of books that I bought after Christmas to read. And I just attended a book party where I got two more new books to read. So, I think I need to start making an extra effort to read. I prefer fiction novels for fun reading. But, in the past couple of years, I have also started enjoying books on self improvement or just study/thinking books. I'll let you know at the end of the month which books I chose to read.
3. Scrapbook 4 layouts. I love to scrapbook. I love putting some of my one million pictures I take, on pretty paper with lots of accoutrements. I also love keeping caught up on my scrapbooking in chronological order. But, I am always behind. In fact, I've never met a scrapbooker that is caught up! So, I tend to get lots done when I go on a retreat or weekend to do nothing but scrapbook. But, when I get home I always tell myself that if I just do a page here or there, I won't be so behind. So, my goal is 4 layouts for the month. I will be kind of shocked if I accomplish this goal. But, I'm hopeful. And it's one of my favorite things to do, so it shouldn't be hard. But it can be hard to prioritize fun things like this when you are a stay at home mom. :)
4. Prepare 2 meals per week. So, since we've been married, Vic has been the cook in our house. He likes to do it and it just works for us. Even since I've been a stay at home mom, although I do get into streaks of making dinner for us, Vic typically is the one to come home and make dinner. I'll make casseroles or marinate things or put things in crockpots here and there, but Vic is still the main food preparer in our house. And many times this is because we eat off the grill and Vic just always does the grill cooking for us. Or certain things, like roasting vegetables can't be put into the oven until he walks in the door, so it ends up that he is the one to just do that as well. And while he doesn't mind, it works better for the kids if we eat at 6:00 or 6:15 and we can't always do that when Vic doesn't get home until 5:45 or 6:00. So, I'm going to make 2 meals a week for the month.
5. Write down spending amounts daily on our bathroom mirror. This habit has worked really well for us in the past. When we take a dry erase marker and just keep a running total of what we are spending and how much of our budget we have left, and write it on our bathroom mirror where we both see it constantly, we do a better job of sticking to our budget. We have a really busy month ahead of us with lots of traveling and we will have more expenses than usual. So, we will try to remember to do this daily so we spend wisely.
Okay - that is it! I'll post a summary at the end of the month to see how well I did and decide if it was beneficial to me to decide whether to blog monthly goals in the future!
Love your list, Sara! And although I think it's great you are going to cook more, based on my one experience eating Vic's grilling, I'd be sure he stuck with that! ;)
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